Autotelic

Quick meaning: Autotelic is an adjective meaning Of or pertaining to the quality of (a thing's) being autotelic.

Meaning

Of or pertaining to the quality of (a thing's) being autotelic.

More Meanings

1. (art, of a work of art or literature) Not motivated by anything beyond itself; thematically self-contained.
2. An autotelic person, a person with an autotelic personality.
3. (psychology, of an activity, process, person or personality) Containing its own meaning or purpose; deriving meaning and purpose from within.

Example Sentences

Chess itself, however – the playing of the game – is most frequently engaged in, as we say, for its own sake, as an autotelic activity rather than as a teleological one. The majority of utterances of a language are teleological, aiming at informing […]

“Running Water Music II” represents a contemporary version of the autotelic poem, freer than its modernist predecessors to assert connections, celebrate openly, declare connections between self and world, but bound by semantic and imagistic frames that derive from a single source.

Measuring autotelic personality similarly with young adults, Hektner (1996) confirmed that autotelics were least happy and motivated in apathy (low-challenge, low-skill) situations, whereas nonautotelics (those least motivated in high-challenge, high-skill situations) did not find the apathy condition aversive.

First of all, it can be inferred that both autotelics and non-autotelics designated the following English activities when their concentration, interest and attention were the highest: communicating in English, also with native speakers, watching English films and programmes, reading authentic materials, sight-seeing, listening to music and translating lyrics.

Word Forms

• autotelics

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include selfsome, autotherapeutic, heterotelic, autonoetic, autotheoretical, autoionizational.

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